The effects of a simple arrival rate control policy on throughput and work-in-process in production systems with workload dependent processing rates

In this paper we investigate the control of throughput and work-in-process (WIP) in job shops where operations processing times in the work centers depend on the workload in the shop. We assume that production efficiency is high if the workload in the shop is such that the workers experience a stimulating work pressure. For higher and for lower workload we assume that their production efficiency is lower because either the workers experience a too low work pressure, or a too high pressure. Such production systems are unstable if the arrival rate is exogenous and larger than the order completion rate under high workload. Therefore a high throughput can only be obtained if the order arrival rate can be controlled in response to the workload in the system. In this paper we investigate the effect of a simple workload dependent arrival rate control policy on the throughput and WIP of a simple model of a job shop. We use numerical analysis of a queueing model to investigate the performance of the shop under various combinations of parameter values in the arrival control policy.